Lather...rinse...repeat



The Importance of Iteration.

It's easy to think that once you've got to the end of a project there is no life left in it. But often it's worth having another go. By this I mean taking a look at the middle stage of your project again and trying to see where it might have otherwise led. It's tempting to just go from one project to the next, but I think you can sometimes learn more by revisiting an old project. One thing that can help in this process is working with someone else, as they can see new possibilities that you might not have seen. (more on group working later).

New possibilities, that what's exciting about old projects. Another method of finding these is to take an imaginative look at your work's legacy. (Sarah Pennington and Chris Downs did a great project with students, which did just this). What would the world be like if the product or service you designed had become incredibly popular? What would the design be like ten years down the line? What if it had been a disaster? What other products or services would have appeared around it? All these imaginative exercises can really help you think about your own and other peoples' designs in a whole new and expanded way.

This process may be painful as it means raking over work that is still not yet cold but it can be very rewarding.

If you want to try this but don't want to use your own project, then swap one with a friend or imagine what the world is like when everyone has a mobile phone or iPod or whatever the latest thing is. Design for that world and you are designing not just for the future but also are able to look with fresh eyes on the designs of today.

"Lather - Rinse - Repeat"

Incidentally, my title here: "Lather - Rinse - Repeat", why do they have that on shampoo bottles? Two reasons: first, when you wash your hair with the shampoo the second time you feel how clean it is by how quickly it lathers up so proving how effective the shampoo has been in the first place. Secondly, and importantly by doing this they get you to use twice as much shampoo as you really need to use. So that's actually a case where repetition is unnecessary, all you learn is "I have clean hair". Try making up stickers (dymotype or other) that say, "Rinse - Towel dry - Relax". Stick them on your shampoo bottles and you'll save shampoo, money, water, time, and the planet.